Spring Time Means Spiders – Ever Seen One In A Bag Of Bananas, Or Fly?

September 10, 2018

So with spring hitting us front and centre, it’s the time of the year where everything seems to come out from wherever it was hiding, and thrives on life and sunshine. Spiders are no exception. So with that in mind, we thought it timely to bring some of the worlds weirdest and wackiest spider stories.

Guiness Book Of World Records – Most Spiders On A Body For 30 Seconds

So we all know that the Guiness Book of World Records has some…..well…..really weird records. None more thatnthe boy who holds the record for the most spiders on his body in for 30 seconds.

This is one brave kid! Tom Buchanan of Australia laid in a clear perspex box and had 125 Golden Orb Spiders put onto his body for 55 seconds during the ‘Australia: Guinness World Records’ TV show in Sydney, New South Wales on 27 August 2005.

Despite only needing to have seventy-five spiders on his body to set the record, Buchanan had one hundred and twenty-five Golden Orb spiders placed on him whilst in a Perspex tank. He also voluntarily exceeded the time limit, staying in the tank for fifty-five seconds.

It’s actually one of those records that as a kid growing up in Australia, you might actually be really proud to hold. Well done son!

2. Why An Irrational Fear Of Spiders May Be Very Costly – Mans Burns House Down With Blow Torch

So all of us at some point have got the “yipps” when unexpectedly finding a spider behind a curtain or under a rug. We’re all human afterall, and there does seem to be some innate instinct to have a fear of spiders. But as this man in Tuscon, USA found out, an irrational fear of spiders can have drastic, and very costly, consequences.

There is nothing worse than a spider infestation, except possibly a blazing inferno engulfing your entire home. One man found out the hard way the true danger of a blow torch when he tried to destroy spiders in his home using fire. Instead of simply removing the eight-legged pests, the man burned his house to the ground. He accidentally created a massive blaze that required 23 firefighters to contain it.

The unnamed man, from Tucson, Arizona, US, was suspected of using a propane torch to kill spiders and burn spiderwebs underneath his mobile home.

3. Spiders Can Fly 1000’s Of Kilometers

Yes…..you read that right, some spider species can actually “fly” 1000’s of km when the conditions are just right. Have you ever seen a spider fly? It’s called “ballooning” and it’s straight out of some 1970’s B grade horror film.

On October 31, 1832, a young naturalist named Charles Darwin walked onto the deck of the HMS Beagle and realized that the ship had been boarded by thousands of intruders. Tiny red spiders, each a millimeter wide, were everywhere. The ship was 60 miles offshore, so the creatures must have floated over from the Argentinian mainland. “All the ropes were coated and fringed with gossamer web”.

It is commonly thought that spiders “balloon” as their silk catches the wind. But researchers have discovered otherwise.

Erica Morley and Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol found that:

Every day, around 40,000 thunderstorms crackle around the world, collectively turning Earth’s atmosphere into a giant electrical circuit. The upper reaches of the atmosphere have a positive charge, and the planet’s surface has a negative one. Even on sunny days with cloudless skies, the air carries a voltage of around 100 volts for every meter above the ground. In foggy or stormy conditions, that gradient might increase to tens of thousands of volts per meter.

Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. And spiders can increase those forces by climbing onto twigs, leaves, or blades of grass. Plants, being earthed, have the same negative charge as the ground that they grow upon, but they protrude into the positively charged air. This creates substantial electric fields between the air around them and the tips of their leaves and branches—and the spiders ballooning from those tips.

Here’s a cool video explaining it:

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4. Banana Spiders

This one will give anyone (even our tough spider fighters here at Murray’s) the creepy crawlies. Because spiders on their own are sometimes cool, and food (bananas) are super cool on their own……but when spiders come out of a banana you’re about to consume….now that’s NOT COOL at all!

An urban legend joined forces with a recurring nightmare and the worst case scenario to permanently traumatize a young mother who found dozens of the world’s most venomous spiders crawling all over the banana she was preparing to consume.

“I thought it was mold,” said Consi Taylor, 29, of London, referring to the white spots she found on her banana. “[B]ut when I had a closer look I saw some funny looking spots…and was horrified to see they were spiders. They were hatching out on the table, scurrying around on my carpet.”

Before realizing she was dealing with dozens of Brazilian wandering spiders(AKA banana spiders) — a highly aggressive, highly venomous spider certified as “the most toxic” by Guinness World Records — Taylor attempted to return the bananas to the Sainsbury’s supermarket where she’d bought them.

Now we’re not sure if this is the actual bag of bananas in the story, but hey……it’s still a spider in a bag of bananas!

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What Twitter Says:

BRO A SPIDER JUST CRAWLED OUT OF MY BAGEL WRAPPING OHHHH HELLLLL NOOOOOO